Feel the Power of the IDF!

ISIS is raising a new generation of terrorist fighters — and its system of indoctrination is 'unprecedented'

ISIS might be ceding territory in the Middle East, but it
hasn't given up the battle for hearts and minds.

The terrorist group is playing a long game, working
aggressively to indoctrinate children under its control to
groom the next generation of jihadis in its image.

While other terrorist groups around the world have also used
children, new reports reveal the unprecedented system ISIS
has created to raise the next generation of terrorists.

German newspaper Der Spiegel
talked to several children who explained how ISIS, also
referred to as IS or the Islamic State, methodically brainwashes
kids to ensure that even if its territory is wiped out, it'll
still have a loyal band of followers keeping the group alive.

"By depicting children, says Malik, IS wanted to show that it was
relatively unimpressed by bombs. IS' message, she explains, is
this: 'No matter what you do, we are raising a radicalized
generation here.' Within the system, says Malik, the children's
task was to spread IS ideology in the long term, and to
infiltrate society so deeply and lastingly that supporters would
continue to exist, even if territory was lost."

Some children living under ISIS control are sent to military
camps, and some are sent to schools.
They're taught how to pray and use weapons, desensitized to
violence, and given drugs to make them more susceptible to
whatever ISIS wants them to believe.

A
new report from the Washington Institute for Near East Policy
details ISIS' system of exposing children to its radical
ideology.

"Stating that the Islamic State promotes religious extremism is
far from sufficient in understanding what it seeks to achieve,
much less what it teaches its students," the report noted,
stating that the terrorist group is creating a "fighter
generation committed to IS' cause" in a way that's "both specific
and unprecedented."

ISIS has created its own textbooks filled entirely with material
that caters to its radical ideology. Weapons are used to
illustrate math problems for young kids, and chapters dealing
with Western governments focus on "explaining why each is a form
of idolatry because of its violation of God’s sovereignty,"
according to the report.

"It is instilling very young children with … Islamism, jihadism,
and it’s something that’s going to stick around for a long, long
time," Charlie Winter, an expert on ISIS propaganda
and senior researcher for Georgia State University, told Business
Insider earlier this year. "It’s an elephant in the room that
isn’t being given enough scrutiny."

Der Spiegel summarizes how the indoctrination process works:

"The recruitment of children takes place in several phases,
beginning with harmless socialization. Islamic State hosts events
in which children are given sweets and little boys are allowed to
hold an IS flag. Then they are shown videos filled with violence.
Later, in the free schools IS uses to promote the movement, they
learn Islamic knowledge and practice counting and arithmetic with
books that use depictions of tanks. They practice beheading with
blond dolls dressed in orange jumpsuits. With a new app developed
by IS, they learn to sing songs that call upon people to engage
in jihad."

ISIS supports this brainwashing with ideological justifications
for its worldview, claiming God has given ISIS the authority to
punish unbelievers.

An introduction printed in its textbooks reads:

"The Islamic State carries the burdens — with the agreement of
God almighty — of refuting [nonbelievers] and bringing them
to a renewed monotheism and a wide Islamic expanse under the flag
of the rightly guided caliphate and its outstretched branches
after it won over the devils and their lowlands of ignorance and
its people of destruction."

Now that ISIS is losing territory in Iraq and Syria, it's
shifting to insurgency tactics similar to what Al Qaeda in Iraq,
ISIS' predecessor, did during the Iraq War. Bombings and
terrorist attacks maintain the sense that ISIS is omnipresent
even when militarily the group is losing.

And the kids ISIS is indoctrinating now will remain even after
the terrorists have lost the cities and towns they once
controlled.

"This is a political problem that will last well beyond the
existence of the group," Winter said. "Even if all the leaders
are killed and [ISIS] suddenly disintegrates … there would be
lots and lots of these children who have known nothing other than
jihadist warfare, who have been taught that Shias need to be
killed at all costs, that there's a global conspiracy against
them and the only way they can survive in life is by killing
people who are their enemies and not really questioning whether
they should be doing it."